Decline and Disgrace at Sydney University — Quadrant

Sydney University, not so much a place of learning than a laundromat specialising in washing brains.

No longer a place of education as indoctrination.

“…The university’s ‘Unlearn’ advertising campaign leaves no doubt it is Leftist indoctrination, not learning, which the institution has made its stock in trade. As a video promotion promises, students will ‘question the world, challenge the established, demolish social norms and build new ones’

The University of Sydney’s latest marketing campaign titled ‘Unlearn’ beggars belief but provides a striking example of how successful the cultural-left has been in subverting the academy. Forget about Cardinal Newman’s ideal of a university education being committed to wisdom and truth and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

While education has always involved questioning accepted truths and challenging the status quo you only need to watch the campaign’s accompanying video to realise that what is intended is more about enforcing a politically correct view of the world on students than wisdom and truth.

Since the cultural revolution of the late Sixties and Seventies the more conservative liberal view of education has been attacked and undermined by a rainbow alliance of cultural-left movements including: Marxism, Neo-Marxism, deconstructionism, postmodernism, feminism and post-colonial and LGBTQI theories.

While often in conflict and disagreement, what all hold in common is the belief that there are no absolutes as knowledge is simply a socio-cultural construct that reinforces the hegemony of the ruling class. A liberal education, instead of being inherently worthwhile or beneficial for its own sake, is part of the ‘ideological state apparatus’ that capitalism uses to reinforce ‘false consciousness’ and to disempower already marginalised groups.

In history, for example, instead of acknowledging the strengths and benefits of Western civilization, students are taught that Western civilisation is oppressive, misogynist, racist, sexist, elitist and guilty of a myriad of politically incorrect crimes ranging from speciesism to environmental destruction.

The belief that truth is relative or simply the result of power relationships makes it impossible to objectively identify what is true and what is false or what more closely approximates reality. A commitment to rationality and empiricism only works when there is agreement about what constitutes what is right and what is wrong.

To equate education with indoctrination and imposing a politically correct ideology on students is also misplaced. A liberal education, on the other hand, is based on the pursuit of truth and the need for an open and free dialogue where often conflicting ideas and concepts are allowed to be voiced…” Decline and Disgrace at Sydney University